Volatile anesthetics are a family of halogenated ethers that can quickly evaporate and thereby be inhaled by patients in need of such treatment. The effects of anesthesia primarily depend upon the concentration of anesthetics administered at the site of action. Most volatile anesthetics are administered in gaseous form to patients via a closed or open breathing circuit involving, for example, an anesthetic mask, a laryngeal mask airway, or an endotracheal tube. The effectiveness of volatile anesthetics delivered via methods described above cannot be directly evaluated in the brain of a patient; instead, other methods that include, for example, measuring the concentration transdermally, must be employed.
Currently-available technologies for measuring transdermal content of volatile anesthetics have been limited to laboratory setups, which can be complex and non-transferrable to portable devices for clinical uses. Furthermore, these methods lack stability and consistency in detection results and lack the capability to accommodate continuous measurements.
As a result, there still remains a need for stable, selective, and portable sensors that are effective in evaluating volatile anesthetics in patients administered with the same.